Ekaterina Serebrianskaya : "After retirement, I was eating without stop"

In the last few years the life of Olimpic champion in rhythmic gymnastics Ekaterina Serebrianskaya changed a lot. She moved to Simpheropol, gave birth to a son, closed her model agency "Silver Star". Now a long time ago in Kyiv finished I International Games, which were organised by Ekaterina. Competition were liked by many people, sportsman agreed to come next year. But it seems that Katya doesn't want to stop on the reached. She is preparing a tv project and finishing the book about her life

- Katya, what changed in your life since your son was born?

- First of all, my day schedule changed, even though I'm not an ideal mom, who from morning till night cares about children, washes diapers and so on. Now everything is more simple. We have a baby-sitter. However, I can't just go somewhere for month or so. My attitude to life and to people changed. I can say that main values in m life changed : those, which were important for me earlier, became unimportant and I solve them easily. In general, I became much more tolerant. When, for example, I was coming from "International Games" to home at 3 a.m, I was shivering from angriness and tireness. We don't have a tradition to raise a voice in our family. My home is my castle. I feet my cozy flat and I can calm down very fast after difficult and tiring day. I come home and I see that my child is sleeping is his bed. In such minutes you understand that problems, cares, business, life marathon isn't do important in you life

- Tell something more about your son. Why did you decide to name him Zhenya?

- If I gave my son this name, I would never call him Zhenya. Well, it happened that I was going to give birth to a child for about 2 months. During that time I was coming to the hospital every Monday with words : "Make it born faster". During this last months it was very difficult for me. Everything was disturbing. Summer, heat, I wanted to become thinner, to start working. In the end I didn't actually care about the name of my son. We christened him on his 8th day of life and there was no sense to change his name then

- Changes happened not just in your life, but also in the life of your parents

- Yes, of course, they happened because of the child. Our granny - Luibov Serebrianskaya decided that rhythmic gymnastics is very important, but her grandson is more important and nearer. Grandfather supported her and they moved from Simpheropol to Kyiv, They live on the street next to mine and granny is always with a child. She teaches him to say mama and baba (granny). If to be true, at first I thought that mom will never choose granny work.

- Is this son naughty or quiet?

- Zhenya is a very smart children. He is only 9 months old, but he can run. Of course, we still need to support him, but he is very fast. In the morning he turns on the music himself, so that I didn't stay in bed. You know, it's enough to show him only once and he gets the whole technique in his hands. He takes the board and repeats the movements, which he say, presses the buttons. His sight is unique!

- If you son decided to go in for sport, will you forbid him?

- I hope that he'll understand that sport is only one of the hobbies and there are a lot of them in life. I wish that he did everything in his life : swimming, gold, tennis and even horse riding, but the main is studying : computer, history, foreign languages. Intellect is above everything.

- Do you have time for rest?

- I have less time for my free time than I wishes. But as soon as I get some free days, I always go somewhere to watch the world. I liked Spain very much. May holidays, for example, I spent with friends in Kosta-Dorado. It turned out that we went there for work on 2 days, but we wanted to stay there for another 7 days. I was impressed by "Port Aventura", entertainment part. It is divided into 5 parts : American, Chinese, Spanish and some else. Every territory has it's style : cuisine, costumes, traditions. And everywhere, on the contrary to Disneyland, there are water attractions. There are such tricks - you go through the mountain and all people who want can pour you with cold water. Everything is simple there : you put a coin, the machine turns on and water who you like ! When we were going down, somebody pushed a cold jet straight into my face. I got wet through and cold. But then I came to this water-pusher myself!

I remember another interesting thing - submarine. You swim peaceful and suddenly an accident happens. Submarine starts to shake, everything blinks, rattles, the water pours from everywhere...Everybody start to get panicked, wet and stressed. Of course, it finished quite nice - the door opened and everybody ran out.

I can say that I had a great rest on the Maldives. Actually I saw a lot in my life, but the Maldives were just superb. I got everything I needed then - my own house with a beach. I felt that I'm a lord of my own destiny. I collected all my thoughts and decided what to do next

- And there were no entertainments?

- Of course, there were! And the races of crabs! Unfortunately our crab, Petya, finished only 3rd

- Isn't it a bronze medal?

- Yes, but he finished 3rd out of 3! There was windsurfing, diving. And once, when we were diving with acqualangs, one Japanese woman from our group saw a huge fish, who, as we thought was sleeping and was doing some funny moves at one and the same time. Japanese started to show that we looked on this fine, but when the instructor saw the fish, he immediately asked us to go to the coast, where she explained us that it was a shark. I don't remember if it was big or small and it wasn't the main then - we were really scared then

- Perhaps you miss those time when you didn't eat much, didn't sleep enough..

- Yes, before the competitions we had to count the food by gramms, sometimes I ate no more than 300 grabs in a day and drank only 2 glasses of water. When I retired, I couldn't go far from the fridge. I ate only once a day. Without stop. Now everything passed. During that period I put on a lot of weight, but my today shape is a results of my work over myself

- You look great! Tell us how can you do it. Perhaps diets and gym...

- I have a ticket to one of the sports clubs, but it's a long way to get there. There is a restaurant on the way to this club, where the food is very tasty. So I usually don't go further the restaurant, even though I like to train myself : morning exercises, massages, swimming, tennis twice a week

- Do you go in for tennis for a long time?

- I always liked tennis : you play in a fresh air, not like we, gymnasts, have - a gym, where it is usually very hot. I took the racket 2 years ago for the 1st time. I trained for about 3 months, then winter came and I gave up, then I had to give birth to my child. I started to play again on the Maldives

- And how are you results?

- How can I get some results? My coach is always shouting : "You aren't on a gymnastics carpet! Bent your legs !". I often use typical for gymnastics elements. Sometimes, I can beat the ball off in some kind of a leap, if I get lazy to run. There are many people on the court when I come to play - everybody likes my games.

- We noticed that you feel comfortably in any type of clothes. Do you try to use one style?

- No, I like different styles. On Saturdays and Sundays I prefer to wear "free" clothes. I have things from "Benetton" and Montana for such days. However, of course, there are such clothes, as strict white costume from Guchi, which I wore on the opening ceremony of "International Games". It was my present that I could organise everything. I think of shoes more than of clothes, buy them more. By the way, not a long time ago my room shoes were tore by my doggie and now I should use my sneakers.

- Katya, as you said, on the Maldives you came to a thought that you had done something in your life and what you are going to do next. And so what did you get?

- I divided my life in 3 parts. I took the first one 14 years (from 4 till 18). So much time I needed to become Olimpic Champion. 2nd step consisted of creating my Charity Foundation and retirement. The next step was giving birth to my son. And now I have next one - organization of "International Games". This part is one of the most difficult. Competitions must take place every year, that means that how long I can organize them, I will be climbing on this step.

- And you model agency "Silver Star" isn't a step?

- Model agency isn't an incident in my life. It's more a try to find myself. Hobby, spend of free time and money, entertainment, but nothing more

- What would you advice 15-years old girls, whose dream is to become a model? They try to take off weight, don't eat to reach this aim...

- It depends on their aim. If every girls wants to be 2nd Sindy Krouford, it can do only 1 per million. If they only want to earn much money, then it's not the best way, because model usually gets 20-30 dollars, maximum 50 for the show. And how much time do they spend on castings and such shows? Really a lot! And that usually harms education, developments. I think that if you study good - then you will be able to earn those 50 dollars per hour, per minute. Every person must develop as a personality, not be a doll. Girls go on the podium and they are, if to say rude, hangers for clothes. Even if the girl is very beautiful she is anyway a beautiful hanger!

- That's why you closed "Silver Star"?

- Agency transformed into Charity Foundation of Ekaterina Serebrianskaya (I didn't make up this name). A lot of it's workers were members of organising committee of International games. If to speak about my models, they went to another agencies and work there pretty well

- An idea to organise International Games belongs to you?

- Of course, I was help. I would never thought of this stupid idea. My impressions of the competitions were much better than I expected. And as everybody wondered, everything was quite well

- And what does Ekaterina Serebrianskaya dream of?

- I'd like to have a rest somewhere in the country. I want river, shish kebab, hammock and just silence. Unfortunately I don't have such place, but I want very much it to appear

- And what about your idea to jump with a parachute?

- Mmm...I'd like of course to feel something new, but to be a killer after the birth of my son I don't want to be for sure

- I think you tried to do some work on television?

- Yes, but it's just a project. Perhaps it will appear on television soon. I think I'd better do it before telling about it. I've already sung, and were writing a book. So now I try to imagine myself in a new position.

- By the way, did you book go out?

- It isn't printed yet, but it is typed on computer. 3 parts were already edited and the 4th one with a name "And what is next?" is still waiting. I don't hurry, I don't want to do it just to say that I had written a book. I hope that such days will come that my book were interesting to read. I write about events in my life starting from the childhood. All interesting except private life. I think that it's not good to show it for public. People, who had already read the book, said that I was very myseterious there